JessInUSA

I'm just curious. Mack and I are going to do this whole process ourselves, because hiring a lawyer is way too expensive. Who used a lawyer, and who did it themselves?

katie4998

Hi Jess,

I think the majority of us on this newsgroup didn't use a lawyer, and got through it just fine...I'm glad you've joined the group before you started, since there are a lot of people on here who are very well-versed in the forms and frustrations of the immigration process!

I'm a fellow Canadian (if I remember correctly, Mack is from Ontario) - I moved from Vancouver, BC to Florida just a couple of weeks ago, and we're about to embark on our Adjustment of Status journey (that's right...the fun never ends!)

Another good newsgroup you two might want to take a look at is CanAm Couples, which is a Yahoo group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canamcouples/

Good Luck - I'm sure that with organization and patience, you and Mack can definitely do this without a lawyer!

~Katie

Noorah101

Hi Jess,

I initially hired a lawyer. She helped me with choosing the best visa option and submitting the I-129F for fiance(e) visa petition. That was before I found this forum. Several months later, I had some frustrations with her, so I did everything else on my own, starting with the Packet 3 materials up to now (went to K1 interview, fiance came here, we got married, and filed his AOS/EAD/AP, of which now he has the EAD and AP) all without the lawyer's asstance. With the help of the friendly and knowledgeable folks on this forum, it was very easy (not without stress, mind you! lol) to do it alone. Let me put it this way....I'm certainly glad I didn't dish out more money to my lawyer, now that I know how straightforward it was to accomplish. Of course, we had no issues with our case, either...i.e. overstays, arrests, previous visas/visits to USA, etc.

With patience and attention to detail (Secret Garden and Karen D...you know what I mean!! lol) going through the immigration process is definitely do-able on your own if you have a straightforward case.

However, also let it be said that a COMPETENT attorney can usually find errors or problems ahead of time and save you some headache, too.

Best Wishes!
Rene

LENNYD96

My wife and I have done it on our own so far. I'm waiting now for the AOS. I'm glad there are places like this. They really helped me out solving so issues with filling out all the forms. I wish I could say its been a pleasurable experience but with all the hoops you have to jump through and the waiting I can't. I'm just hope I'm at the top of the hill now and its all down hill from here.LOL. I'm also from Ontario I lived in Thunder Bay, London and Windsor until I moved down to Alabama. Good luck and I"m sure you'll do ok. If you have any question this site is great with helping people out.
Lenny

ian-mstm

Sheila and I finished the entire process without a lawyer - from K-1 to naturalization. We did get a lot of good advice along the way from the folks in this forum. I'm firmly convinced that as long as you have no special circumstances (prior arrests, prior visa problems, etc.) you can do the whole thing yourself sans lawyer. Good luck to you both.

Ian

Rete

The replies you will receive from this inquiry will make for interesting reading. However, I would like to point out that the experiences of others does not necessarily mean that they will apply to you.

The services of an attorney, at least one that is well informed and a hands-on immigration attorney who does more than just fill in our petitions, can be a valuable asset to many people who don't have problem areas in their lives that need to be overcome.

If you or your fiancee are the type of personality who cannot handle stress well, has difficulty focusing, finds a myraid of information daunting, is not detailed oriented or efficient, or tends to move frequently, then you most definitely can benefit from the services of an immigration attorney.

The process is navigable for most do it yourselfers, as the majority of those here can and will tell you. The consensus is if you have a troublefree background (the foreign fiancee at least) with no criminal transgressions in your closet and a near perfect healthly constitution, you should be able to do it yourself. However, even with a squeaky clean present and past life, you can run into problems that requires the intervention of a hands-on immigration attorney to solve. Lost petitions and/or documentation, missed letters from the USCIS, clarification of a simple remark made by the examiner that the newsgroup cannot handle, etc.

Yes, Jim and I did it ourselves. We started the process with a Fiancee Visa on March 23, 1998 and finished with the naturalization oath taking on December 12, 2003. Five years from start to finish but not without problems along the way that required the assistance of an attorney.

Mr. Udall graciously came to our aid to obtain information from the NYC USCIS on the clarification of when residency was granted. Our Representative's immigration liaison intervened after that to get Jim's green card made and a new I-551 placed in his passport after September 11, 2001. We also had dealings with the USCIS' Internal Audit Unit in Washington, DC regarding one of NYC's USCIS employees.

Yes, we could have done it all without the help of Matt or the liaison but their assistance made wading through the garbage quicker so that the stench didn't linger long.

The bottom line is, you know yourself and your fiancee. You know your capabilities and you can take all the polls you want. The final decision hinges on what your capabilities are. Make the best decision for yourself. If that means retaining an attorney to work with you, then don't be intimidated by those who walked the yellow brick road by themselves.

Rete

SecretGarden

Extremely well said, Rete....

Jess, we didn't use a lawyer either and other than both of us having been previously married, we had a very straightforward case. That and I think that having just gone through two lingering divorces between the two of us, we'd had enough of lawyers at least for the time being.

(Don't take that as a slam against lawyers in general---I have close relatives who are lawyers and judges, so I am in no way speaking out against the profession!)

Rete brings up some excellent points. And just because you don't start out with a lawyer doesn't mean you can't employ one if issues arise. To find a qualified immigration lawyer in your area go to the AILA website. www.aila.org

Good luck!
~SecretGarden

Aliluv

Hi,

I was all ready to do the process myself until I printed all the forms. I took one look and we decided to use a lawyer. In my opinion it was worth every penny. We met with someone from our lawyers office and she took all our info. She told us all the documents we needed. Then they sent back all the forms to sign.

It was better for me because I stress over everything.

We filed in Sept 2002, our interview was April 2003. My husband received his Conditional Green Card in June 2003.

I remember our biggest concern was money at the time. We used money from our wedding to hire a lawyer. I have never regretted it.

mstuckaNOSPAM

SecretGarden <member4024@british_expats.com> wrote:
    > Rete brings up some excellent points. And just because you don't start
    > out with a lawyer doesn't mean you can't employ one if issues arise. To
    > find a qualified immigration lawyer in your area go to the AILA website.
    > www.aila.org

Just one little thing to add to this excellent thread: Folks here seem
quick to say, "Call your Congressman!" Lawyers here have indicated they
won't touch with a 10-foot pole any case handled by a Congressman.

Suze and I are lawyerless. I've no doubt a lawyer could have helped us
already -- our first filing bombed because the application fee had
changed but not the instructions, a stupid mistake I blame solely on
USCIS. That said, a lawyer would have known about that problem, and our
filing would be six weeks ahead. That maybe wouldn't have made a
substantial difference in our case, but I can tell you were were pretty
darn scared when Suze's grandmother went back othe the hospital for a
second time and we couldn't get advanced parole. I dunno.

(Oh, important thing we've thought of between the two of us: Suze's
English is better than mine, and I'm a writer. She also has a master's
degree. We can't think of how terrifying and troubling this process must
be for folks that are less literate, less educated and with less access to
books/Web sites/these forums. We feel -very- lucky to be who we are in
this process, because it can be damned confusing.)



--
Mike Stucka / mstucka at math.luc.edu
This person runs on ethanol, an environmentally friendly alternative fuel.

sphyrapicus

We used an attorney to adjust status. I was an F-1 student attending school in the U.S. We had a very straightforward case. Not being in the know, I thought adjusting status from being a student was a big deal but it turns out it is quite common.

When we retained our attorney, he was very upfront and told us that if we managed to both obtain postgraduate degrees that we were surely capable of completing the forms ourselves. Even with that comment, we still wanted assistance just for peace of mind in case something went awry. We looked at it as an insurance policy. It was well worth the investment. The biggest thing our attorney did for us was knowing the local office's procedures and being able to walk us through how our local office processed things (each office seems to have their little quirks on how they do things). For some of the smaller district offices it can be difficult to find others on the internet who have posted their experiences.

Having said all of this, we have filed everything subsequent to our AOS on our own (I-751, N-400). But, we are lot more versed in immigration issues now than we were when we initiated our adventure into USCIS territory back in 1999.

You can train for a marathon on your own but it's a lot easier to keep on track if you have a coach / trainer.

inquisitive40

Ditto to all the previous comments, one addition I would make is that lawyers may not be as expensive as you might think AND some will take payments on their fees.
From my experience you need to make sure the lawyer you choose can get everything done in a timely manner and also that they are not just a lawyer who "also does" immigration, there are lawyers who will take your case and really have not got a lot of experience in immigration, in a situation like that it is very little more advantage than doing it yourself.
My thought about having a good lawyer is that you will bring him any paperwork he requires eg. birth certs, passports, etc and then he does the rest and you can sit back and wait for your file to be processed. Also another great advantage of a lawyer is that if you move address he will still be able to receive your receipts and appointment notices and so the address change will be minor (without an attorney this can go badly wrong).
My final word would be to search for a recommended attorney (AILA or maybe even someone on the forum might give a referral) and then make an appointment, some lawyers will do the initial consultation free, others will charge around $100. In the initial consultation you can voice any fears or problems you might have and then be advised by the lawyer, then go away think about your options and then proceed from there. For many people this initial consultation will ease their minds and steer them towards doing it themselves, for others it will highlight a problem that they may not realise even exists.
The choice at the end of the day is then up to you.
Patrick

Folinskyinla

Hi Rete:

I like to tell my clients that if I do my job right and the gods smile on their case, and the case goes smoothly, the optimal result will have them wondering why they hired me!

However, even the best prepared, most qualified cases can get what I call "snakebit" and become the cases from Hell for both client and lawyer. I have one "national interest waiver" case which is the cleanest I've ever seen and clearly falls within what Congress intended. However, the NIW became the goose that laid the golden egg -- NIW's are a statutory exemption from a job offer normally needed for an employment based case. However, the statute does NOT exempt them from the labor certificate requirement. However, the labor certificate practice and regulations [not the statute] DO require an individual job offer from ONE employer. In order to solve this conundrum, the regulations implementing NIW included an exemption from the labor certificate. What happened then was the NIW was used as a way for people with job offers as a way around the cumbersome L/C process. The former INS viewed this as an "abuse" and they finally issued the "NYSDOT" case severly restricting NIW.

We got caught up in the NYSDOT fall-out, ended up having a denied petition and had to refile and got it approved since my client's occupation by necessity involved a lot of individual short and long term contracts and private sales.

We finally have an approved visa petition and then we file for adjustment with CSC five years ago. They transfer case to Los Angeles. Family's files get split up. Finally, last month, we get an interview for the family EXCEPT for the "principal" applicant. I went to work and discovered that file had been sent to National Records Center in Missouri for storage -- this was a mistake because it was still unadjudicated. The LOS problem solver section and I got the file back and whole family was interviewed last week.

Case will be approved as soon as new fingerprint clearances come back [they gave an ASC appointment for THAT DAY to expedite the case].

BTW, both the DAO and I were scratching our heads on why this case took so long -- the case was clearly approvable, my client will be a true asset to the US. It was just that the case was "snakebit."

My point is that a competent immigration attorney is often an insurance policy--if things go wrong, they have the knowledge to roll with the punches and deal with the problems.

jeffreyhy

Jess,

I didn't hire a lawyer to do any of the work for me, but I did consult with lawyers on several occasions to get advice with respect to my particular circumstances on certain points.

Regards, JEff

Daliya

well, i NEVER used lawyer before/ we were doing all paperwork
ourselves< reading INS instructions and later using different Internet
groups.
BUT now i have a difficult question about my daughter living overseas
and her Citizenship.
I did my homework - lookedin Internet, asked questions everywhere and
finally - Had appointment with lawyer.
IT WAS DISUSTER!!! :(((
I mean it - it was total disaster. There were TWO of them. To start
with - they HAD NO idea what I was talking about - and I was talking
about INS documents (printed and filed). Than I was asked to show them
the dox i had. they read it. They had no idea what to say< they
started searching Internet in front of me and my husband.
The end - I paid for wasting my time.
It was in Arlington, VA. not country side.
My advice is – do you homework, read as much as possible here and on
INS cite. Ask question. And SAVE money.

SecretGarden

Were they lawyers who specialized in immigration matters? Just being a "lawyer" doesn't mean someone knows the ins and outs of this particular process, nor should they. To get a referral to an immigration lawyer, go to www.aila.org.

~SecretGarden